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How does my brain work? Why am I conscious? Where is my memory? Is what I perceive around me reality or just an illusion? We all ask these questions, which we could sum up in a single question: Who am I?
How is it that I have memories and that I feel I exist? What does it mean that my mind is free in time and space, and yet I am imprisoned in a body that is doomed to disappear? What happens to my mind when my body disappears? What are the risks of my suffering from a brain disease? Could my whole being eclipse because of a disease in which my body survives but my mind ceases to exist? What remedies are there? What hope does reasearch hold out?
Recent discoveries about the brain allow us to ask such questions more pointedly, hoping to define more clearly the relations of the brain with the mind, of man with his body.
This book is based on numerous discussions with specialists. It attempts to determine the state of the art. It is organized in chapters that can be read in continuity, but it is equally possible to discover the chapters in a different way.
List of contents
The Controversial Seat of Myself.- A Simple Architecture of the Brain.- Seeing Through Oneself: Brain Imaging.- Dispersed Memories.- The Prevention of Parkinson Disease.- The Treatment of Alzheimer Disease.- The Cerebrovascular Accident.- The Fatality of Tumors.- Altered States of Consciousness.- The Myth of the Artificial Brain.- The Power and the Fragility of Oneself.
Summary
How does my brain work? Why am I conscious? Where is my memory? Is what I perceive around me reality or just an illusion? We all ask these questions, which we could sum up in a single question: Who am I?
How is it that I have memories and that I feel I exist? What does it mean that my mind is free in time and space, and yet I am imprisoned in a body that is doomed to disappear? What happens to my mind when my body disappears? What are the risks of my suffering from a brain disease? Could my whole being eclipse because of a disease in which my body survives but my mind ceases to exist? What remedies are there? What hope does reasearch hold out?
Recent discoveries about the brain allow us to ask such questions more pointedly, hoping to define more clearly the relations of the brain with the mind, of man with his body.
This book is based on numerous discussions with specialists. It attempts to determine the state of the art. It is organized in chapters that can be read in continuity, but it is equally possible to discover the chapters in a different way.
Additional text
From the reviews:
"In this compact book, Neirynck … reflects on the views of the brain and how this amazing organ can be studied. … The book reviews the configuration of the brain from its cellular elements to its clustered parts and their known functions. Methods of examining the brain through contemporary imaging techniques are elicited, while the disorders that affect brain and subsequently body function are clearly described. … Summing Up: Recommended. All levels of undergraduate and two-year technical program students." (R. A. Hoots, Choice, Vol. 46 (9), May, 2009)
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From the reviews:
"In this compact book, Neirynck ... reflects on the views of the brain and how this amazing organ can be studied. ... The book reviews the configuration of the brain from its cellular elements to its clustered parts and their known functions. Methods of examining the brain through contemporary imaging techniques are elicited, while the disorders that affect brain and subsequently body function are clearly described. ... Summing Up: Recommended. All levels of undergraduate and two-year technical program students." (R. A. Hoots, Choice, Vol. 46 (9), May, 2009)
